einstuerzende neubauten: classic or dud?

i interviewed blixa two weeks ago -- he's a really nice guy!

??!!!!?? - are you insane?

It didn't work when he was 20 either, I think this proves I'm not insane. He's weedy alright, almost as weedy William Bennett, ha ha.

I cannot agree with no. 3.

Even better that Blixa would also be a Bad Seed.

I honestly haven't listened to them in years. Within some time of the initial infatuation, I more or less found them to be inconsistent and often dull. I mostly just haven't been in the mood to listen to that clunky, lugubrious sound in ages. If I was to pick a track to put on now it would be "Kalte Sternen" (it's pretty and catchy) or "Headcleaner".

Classic, classic, classic.

Maybe not weedy so much as aiming for intensity and power and falling well short of it and sounding like someone throwing a tantrum instead (see William Bennett)

nagel mein herz an ein fensterkreuz (nail my heart onto the crossbar)

Half Man from 1984 is the album I will treasure; the late-'90s stuff was interesting but not as exciting, and haven't seen/heard them since...

Ende Neu.

Can understand why 12-15 year-olds would say "classic", but it's harder to comprehend the notion of adults (17 and up) giving this codswollop the time of day (at least not without extreme embarrassment).

Then again, arrested development is the coin of the realm, ain't it?

The music of, say, "Vanadium I-Ching" is the product of a quite focused and disciplined attention to objects and sounds, and the structure of the piece is pretty far removed from any kind of childish tantrum. The entrance of musical lines was determined by a temporal map of cracks in a piece of metal; this kind of conceptual compositional strategy seems pretty coolly analytic and controlled to me.

On February 20th, the ICA will stage a Re-enactment of the now-legendary ICA performance, Einstürzende Neubauten’s ‘Concerto for voice and machine.’ The original event took place in 1984 when it was seen as a reaction against music as an easily and readily commodifiable package and industry in post-punk conservative Britain. The event comprised of cacophonous but orchestrated noise and destruction with industrial machinery and tools being used to drill holes in the stage of the ICA and was called to a halt after 21 minutes when ICA technicians turned off the power! On February 20th, emerging young artist Jo Mitchell will direct the re-enactment of this seminal event in an attempt to highlight the gap between the real and the represented and to question notions of expectation, consensus and the conventions of (the different) times.

The Strategies Against Architecture series of compilation albums gives you a pretty good overview of the earlier years, while the ironically titled Greatest Hits set from a few years ago is a useful round-up of the later years.

Cosign, Strategies I & II are excellent.

Yeah Strategies II was my entry point. Plenty of classics not really available elsewhere too

I was a Phase III supporter but felt like the retail release of Jewels was a bit of a kick in the teeth.

I think I knew about this, then forgot about it. Kind of ambivalent about missing out.

In lieu of a general Berlin-based music thread, I thought this was the next best place to park this -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sjqu59mF7Cc

So the first digital single will be out at the start of April. (Probably Ten Grand Goldie - which will be very interesting, as that's the one that the supporters had the most input into (quite literally.))

I've also heard that they're going to be doing a deal to get their entire back catalogue onto Spotify, which will be grand - half of it is under the Stevo Curse, half of it is just missing, and bits and bobs have turned up piecemeal over the years - so getting the whole thing in one place will quite an accomplishment.

Yes, there will be a box set for the collectors. With vinyl and CDs and a full colour glossy book and a film and bits and bobs (and LOL @ who they let do the liner notes!)

Might be going into Neubauten overload for the next few months, but I'm really excited! It's been such a surprise to discover how playful Blixa is.

::tosses a glitterbomb into thread:: HURRAH!

Are the Potomak cds still available. & did they cover all of the first major lineup's material?
Not sure if they needed to go beyond chung and mufti leaving cos I think they may have had more control of their catalogue beyond there.

Glittery make-up, flower crowns and the return of SHOPPING TROLLEY in the new video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Nz9t_4XLcc

^^^probably one of the most evocative and salient songs of the album, but gives a general idea of the hauntingly elegant and elegiac mood.

Album is out on the 15th. I know distribution is... tricky at the moment, but they've finally come round to digital streaming, and it will be on all the major streaming platforms, too. (I'm just hoping the whole postal system holds together long enough for the box set to get here!)

It's a nice song, but it's made me realize that I don't want to grow old with Einstürzende Neubauten. Their elegiac phase does not speak to me. I miss the EN of roughly 1980-1992, even knowing that I came to them relatively late (didn't see them live until 1989, but saw them four times in four years - 1989, twice in 1990, and again in 1992). That's the group I love - the manic, junk-smashing, power-drill-shrieking, dropping-an-anvil-through-a-concert-hall-stage EN. I'm glad they're still out there, still making work that speaks to them and to others, but I'm never gonna feel about anything after Tabula Rasa the way I feel about the stuff from their first dozen years.

"Ten Grand Goldie," the other new song released so far, is much closer to what I was hoping for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIjTHkN21Zo

I quite like 10 Grand Goldie, more than most of what I've heard from them over the last 20 years, but nothing really new to be honest.

So this has leaked and is sounding pretty great so far. "Zivilisatorisches Missgeschick" is amazing.

Yeah, I've heard the whole thing now and it's really good. Probably gonna review it somewhere.

Re-homing this, from an inappropriate thread on ILE:

Neubauten just released a newer live version of Sehnsucht where Blixa (still currently at 'punch myself in the face' levels of crush) very deliberately sings the untranslateable punning German part of the lyrics in English, going into a chant of "addicted to desire, addicted to desire" which is very much where I'm at regarding crushes. Crushes are a huge source of energy - (I no longer believe they are the only source of energy, but I don't think B does, either any more) - but they are also an addiction. Addictions can both sap and feed one's energy.

Also, Neubauten are in the process of setting up a Bandcamp. They're undecided if they're going to concentrate on older stuff, newer stuff, weirder unavailable stuff (e.g. the Musterhaus era experiments), live stuff (they are sitting on a powderkeg of amazing, well-recorded live material that blows some of the 'official' versions out of the water) or what they're going to do with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8OSBMy-940

Or lord, a baby Prussian, hasn't changed at all in some ways. Still just a big overenthusiastic puppy! Blixa and their ~album of love songs~ bless your little rubber wellies.

I was hoping to see some more reactions to Alles In Allem. Like, I feel like I almost know *too much* about this album, at this point, and I was really hoping to read some more reactions of people coming to it with fresher ears?

It's a funny thing but I feel a time-lag of appreciation with Neubauten's music, some of their records have taken years to sink in, those ones often tend to end up as my favourites.

Lament, for instance, still feels really fresh and detailed and in need of more listening time, which is a bit ridiculous as it's like, 6 years old?

I know it's silly as the music isn't as complex and demanding, especially these days, I think it might just be that they're so significant, culturally speaking, that the longer they roll the more my brain tells me that they need proper attention and not just cursory listening in the car or while reading.

Lament didn't really fully click for me, until I saw it live and understood it as ~the soundtrack to a theatre piece~ as much as a complete album. I was listening to it as a complete album around the time of all the 1914-1918 WWI centenery stuff, as a very necessary corrective to all the jingoism in my own country, and it worked for that perfectly.

There's a thing with Neubauten albums, where they are often working on multiple levels at once. There's an immediate hit of how the music and mood hits you because they are super talented musicians who communicate emotion through noise really effectively. There's a deeper level as you spend more time with the lyrics (often there's translation involved, and not just translation from German, but understanding Blixa's complex allusions and symbolism). Then there's a whole nother level that takes place on a cultural context level. Levels 2 and 3 can take years!

But that doesn't mean that the enjoyment of listening on level 1 is cursory or invalid or ~bad fandom~. They are still amazing on an "I listened to this and it hit me in my hips and my heart" level. If they *weren't* amazing on that level, no one would ever bother pushing through to the deeper levels.

I like that they're just a little less graceful and more turbulent these days, around the time of 'Silence is Sexy' and 'Perpetuum Mobile' it came across quite poised and low-key. Although I do really enjoy those records nowadays

It felt like at the gigs I saw around 'Alles Wieder Offen' they came back to life a bit more.

Did you go to the weekend thing they did in 2010-ish? Oh my lord, that Garage gig was so amazing.

It is to my great regret that I never got to see them before the Lament shows! I know so many people who have had such great experiences at their ~event weekends~ and the like. I wish I had gone to the Garage thing.

The thing is, I actually like Perpetuum Mobile as an album, more than Alles Wieder Offen. It has more of what I like in music - that Perpetuum was really their 'let's do Krautrock' album, musically. But the clue to their attitude was really in the name - Alles Wieder Offen was where they *felt* more open as a band again, where they felt more connected, more engaged, more happy to be ~doing Neubauten~ again? (And The Jewels, the supporters-only album that was the weirder, even more freeform and 'experimental' companion to AWO, is one of my favourite things they have ever done.) They sounded like they were more "back to life" because they were feeling more back to life.

And I know the parallel in the album names is not deliberate (they actually wanted to avoid it) but Alles in Allem is also very much a "back to life" and an opening-up record. I cannot believe how open and how personal Blixa was willing to get on the record. (And Blixa being Blixa, of course people, including myself, were looking for 8 layers of meaning, when on some songs - no, really, it was exactly what they were saying it was.)

Anyway, boom tish, it's just gone live:

https://neubauten.bandcamp.com/releases

I must get Alles in Allem. I haven't been very good at following Neubauten more recently; it's time to jump in again.

I mentioned upthread that I was going to review Alles In Allem, but I never posted the link. Here it is. Now off to Bandcamp I go...

25th anniversary concert in Gijon, Spain on April 13, 2005.
credits
released April 13, 2005

bless them for doing this, seriously, but lol this is not how it works

(I'm biased cuz I need release dates to log radio play)

How should they be doing it, then?

(This is a serious question, please be gentle with them - they are a bunch of middle-aged Germans who are a bit perplexed by Bandcamp.)

All of their shows got released as CDRs, memory sticks, etc. about 10 minutes after the end of the set, so that they could be sold at the merch table. So that's what they mean by "released" - it was literally available for commercial sale at the merch stand, and on their web store as soon as the show was over.

haha I just mean the "release date" should be the day it was uploaded/"released"

if you could actually let someone know, that would be awesome. totally not a big deal, I was just amused, but I really do use the release dates to log "new" plays for licensing $. I want them to get their fractions of pennies!

and again, it's really cool that they are doing this, I will keep my eye on it. would love a lossless copy of The Jewels, for example.

(uploaded to Bandcamp, I mean, although yeah if they were available aftershow then it does muddy those waters a bit but afaict Bandcamp treats reissues as having the release date of the reissue not the original)

Thanks for the clarification! It's useful information, and I'll pass it on.

Gonna give the new one a proper listen over the weekend, might dig out The Jewels too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQoBph_FTFI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNR1nGolZVA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEyaGBSDpiA

Halber Mensch time. yes this is my industrial week because there are limits to how much metal I can consume a year even for me.

this is my very first listen.

Ohhhh nice, that's a great record.

the intro track I coulda listened to for a half hour, if my mother wouldn't have run in screaming

my EN favourite.

so many greats; the title track, der tod ist ein dandy, seele brennt, yu gung, sehnsucht....

the intro track I coulda listened to for a half hour, if my mother wouldn't have run in screaming

amazing!

yeah this fucking ruuules. anything percussive and mechanical works for me and this has that in droves.

How much of their other music have you heard N?

somewhere between 0 and none

Oh nice, what a journey!

This may be worth your time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=posxMfqdgIM

And if you can track down the Liebeslieder documentary also, it's some story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VsIW3M5p1o

hell fucking ya

please sir, can we have some more...

<3 N.U. Unruh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxDriPLyBqo

New single!

Just got the new one. Sort of in vein of Alles In Allem, but less accessible on first two listens. I'm sure it'll sink in.

Per an announcement on the official forum, Alex Hacke has left the band. Sad to see him go, he'd been a member almost as long as the two remaining founder members Blixa and Unruh, but the last two albums haven't done much for me.

I am sad it's come to this. But I also feel that Neubauten is very much Blixa and Andrew and whoever plays with them. I wish good luck to Alex with his other projects, but I'm also glad that Andrew and Blixa are committed to carrying on in whatever form they continue.

Their supporters show of almost entirely improvised work in Berlin last year was one of the best concerts I've seen in a long time. I hope that they release it as a live album!

But I say that as someone who really loves the freeform Kosmische jams of Rampen / Alien Pop Music!